Phoebe Greenwood’s anonymous EU diplomat despairs at trade upgrade with Israel: #BDSFAIL

In what must be sad news for the BDS folks and other anti-Zionists of all stripes, the Guardian reported that “The EU will offer Israel upgraded trade and diplomatic relations in more than 60 areas at a high-level meeting in Brussels on Tuesday.”

The report by Phoebe Greenwood noted the following:

“The EU will widen its relationship with Jerusalem on a range of areas including migration, energy and agriculture. It will remove obstacles impeding Israel’s access to European government-controlled markets and enhance Israel’s co-operation with nine EU agencies, including Europol and the European Space Agency.”

The new areas of co-operation include what’s known as the Agreement on Conformity, Assessment and Acceptance of industrial products, or ACAA, which refers to the “elimination of technical barriers to trade”, thereby increasing the accessibility of Israeli markets to products from the EU and vice versa”.  The package also promises to “further bilateral co-operation” between Israel and key EU agencies, including the EU’s Judicial Co-operation Unit and the European Police Office.

However, Greenwood dutifully located an “anonymous” EU diplomat to question the wisdom of such an upgrade in relations with Israel.

“One senior EU diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that despite private complaints of the inconsistency of chastising Israel with one hand while rewarding it with the other, not one minister was prepared to oppose Tuesday’s agreement.

“I was struck by the fact that a whole range of relations was offered to Israel – at the request of Israel – as if nothing is happening on the ground,” the diplomat said. “Most ministers are too afraid to speak out in case they are singled out as being too critical towards Israel, because, in the end, relations with Israel are on the one hand relations with the Jewish community at large and on the other hand with Washington – nobody wants to have fuss with Washington. So [ministers] are fine with making political statements but they refrain from taking concrete action.” “[emphasis added]

Yes, of course: Hapless EU ministers are pressured into upgrading relations with Israel due to the fear of offending “Washington”, and the Jewish community.

The EU diplomat, who chose not to use his or her real name out of fear, it seems, of the possible dangerous consequences of speaking truth to Zionist power, added:

” “The only possible tool for the EU to make Israel change its behaviour is to use the weight and power of these [diplomatic and trade] relations,” he said.”

Greenwood adds:

“Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs, admits the EU and Israel may have their differences, but, dismissed the idea of trade sanctions as nonsensical:

“Both sides would suffer terribly if we start throwing eggs at each other. With Greece and Spain imploding, it doesn’t make sense for the EU to do anything to damage trade with anyone at this point,” Hirschson said, pointing out that two-thirds of Israel’s imports are bought from EU member states.”

Indeed, the Israeli spokesperson makes an important point, one which has broader significance in the Jewish state’s battle against delegitimization tactics such as BDS.

The purpose of BDS, which has its origins in the NGO Forum of the UN’s 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, “is to isolate Israel via boycotts of Israeli academic, cultural, and consumer institutions, divestment from companies doing business with Israel, and sanctions in the areas of military, economic, and diplomatic cooperation agreements between Israel and other states.”

However, what BDS activists never seem to take into consideration, despite a pitiful record of failure upon failure, is that Israel’s increasing technological and economic prowess serves as a natural bulwark against such pressure.

EU officials’ reluctance to embrace BDS, either de facto or de jure, is not based on fear of angering Jews (a community which, after all, represents a measly two tenths of 1% of the world’s total population) but, rather, on a sober understanding of their own political and economic interests.

For instance, Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds, and first in venture capital investments (as a percentage of GDP) compared to 34 OECD nations, not because venture capitalists are passionate Zionists, but because they intuitively understand that Israel’s economic success, highly educated workforce and relative political stability makes it a sound investment.

Additionally, Israel’s recent emergence as a regional energy superpower will likely mean that the ability of the anti-Zionist Arab governments to influence political opinion in Europe and the rest of the world may decline.

In short, there is a direct and necessary relationship between Israel’s culture of success (which is, by nature, immune to outside influence) and the increasing irrelevance of  BDS – a supremely immoral movement which is destined to continue to fail spectacularly.

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